We finished our first coop earlier this week and the girls are moved in and are very happy.

We looked around this website and used a combination of ideas we found here. Our goal was to keep the cost down and decided to go on the hunt for as much free wood as we could find. Well....did y'all know there are stacks and stacks of discarded wood behind your local Lowes?? Except for the plywood, hardware cloth and paint we had to buy, everything else came from discarded wood found behind our local Lowes store. We found 2x4's, 2x2's, 1x3's all behind Lowes from discarded crates that mowers and tractors are received in. We asked the store manager if we cound have some scrap wood from behind the store and he said. "take all you want."

It took about 2 weekends to complete the project, but it came out well. The coop is 4'x8' with a plywood roof painted white ( six coats ) to help keep the heat down in the summer. It has been in the low 90's most of this week and the coop has stayed very cool inside. Much cooler than I expected.

Thank you for a great website. It is a great source for poultry keeping.